*Wendell Green was born on this date in 1887. He was a Black Lawyer and Judge. Wendell Elbert Green was born in Topeka, Kansas; his father was a native of Bermuda. Green graduated from the University of Kansas in 1908 with a degree in chemistry. In 1910, he worked as a druggist in a St. […]
learn more*On this date, in 1887, The Dawes Act was passed. Named after white-American Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, it is also known as the General Allotment Act or the Dawes Severalty Act. The intersectionality between African Americans and Native Americans was affected by this legal episode. It authorized the President of the United States to subdivide Native American tribal landholdings into allotments for Native American heads […]
learn moreNathan McGill born on this date in 1888. He was an African American lawyer and businessman.
Born in Quincy, FL., Nathan Kellogg McGill was the son of Nathan and Agnes (Zeigler) McGill. He graduated from Cookman Institute in 1909, Boston University in 1912, and received his L.L.B. from Boston University in 1912. McGill began practicing law in 1912 and started his own law practice Jacksonville in 1913. McGill was publisher of the Florida Sentinel in Jacksonville from 1916 to 1920.
learn moreOn this date in 1890, public schools allowed Blacks to enroll in Visalia, California.
On that date, the California Supreme Court, in Wysinger v. Crookshank, reversed a lower court decision and ordered that 12-year-old Arthur Wysinger be admitted to Visalia’s regular school system.
learn more*The birth of Charles P. Howard Sr. in 1890 is celebrated on this date. He was an African American soldier, attorney, and columnist.
He was born in Des Moines and graduated from the Fort Des Moines officer-candidate school in 1917. One year later he was a second lieutenant and serving with the 92nd Division, 366th Infantry in France during World War I. After the military, Howard received his law degree from Drake University in 1920. He was a gifted lawyer who never lost a capital trial.
learn more*Inez C. Fields was born on this date in 1895. She was a Black lawyer and activist. Inez Catherine Fields was from Hampton, Virginia, the daughter of George Washington Fields, an attorney, and Sarah “Sallie” Haws Baker Fields. Her uncle, James Apostle Fields, a Newport News attorney, served one term in the House of Delegates. Fields […]
learn moreTheodore Sylvester Boone was born on this date in 1896. He was an African American attorney, pastor, author, and editor.
Born in Winchester, Texas, Boone was the son of Alexander and Lillian (Chaney) Boone. He attended Terrell High School in Terrell, Texas, and a number of universities, including Prairie View A&M and Bishop College in Texas. From 1918 to 1920, he studied at Des Moines University and the University of Iowa. In 1921, one year after graduation, he wrote a book titled “Paramount Facts in Race Development.”
learn moreOn this date Sadie Alexander, an African American lawyer and activist was born in in 1898.
Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander was a pioneer among Black women in United States law and education, and a committed civil rights activist. She was born in Philadelphia into an accomplished family. She was educated in Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Alexander graduated from M Street High School (now Dunbar high school) in Washington, and entered the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Education in 1915. Graduating in 1918, she helped found the gamma Chapter of the Delta Theta Sorority.
learn more*On this date in 1898, the “Grandfather Clause” was enacted for voting purposes.
The Grandfather Clause was a legal or constitutional mechanism passed by seven Southern states during reconstruction to deny suffrage to black Americans. It meant that those who had enjoyed the right to vote prior to 1867, or their lineal descendants, would be exempt from educational, property, or tax requirements for voting. As a result, even if they met all the requirements, they were not allowed to vote.
learn more*On this date in 1898, Williams v. Board of Education was decided. This landmark civil rights and education case was before the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. In Williams v. Board of Education, black lawyer J.R. Clifford argued against the 1892 Tucker County Board of Education’s decision to shorten the school year for African American schoolchildren from nine […]
learn more*Alexander Tureaud was born on this date in 1899. He was an African American Attorney and civil rights leader.
Alexander Pierre Tureaud, Sr. grew up at 907 Kerlerac Street, one block below Esplanade, at the bend of Dauphine in New Orleans’ Seventh Ward, known as the black Creole community. His father, Louis Tureaud, was a carpenter/contractor and his mother Eugenia was a housewife and part-time domestic. There were eleven children, six boys and five girls. The family attended St. Augustine Catholic Church.
learn more*The birth of Clifford Durr in 1899 is marked on this date. He was a White American lawyer.
learn more*Loren Miller was born on this date in 1903. He was an African American journalist, civil rights activist, attorney and judge.
He was born in Pender, Nebraska to former slave, John Miller, and Nora Herbaugh, a White Midwesterner of Dutch ancestry. Miller attended Kansas University and received his law degree from Washburn Law School in Topeka, Kansas in 1928.
learn more*Ronald Davies was born on this date in 1904. He was a white-American lawyer and Judge who was born in Grand Forks, ND. A 1922 Grand Forks Central High School graduate, he received a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Dakota in 1927. Davies attended law school at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., graduating […]
learn moreTheodore M. Berry, an African American politician, was born on this date in 1905.
He was born in Maysville, a small town on the banks of the Ohio River, to a white father, a farmer he met only once, and a deaf mother who and communicated with him only in sign language. As a child, he sold newspapers, shined shoes, shoveled coal, delivered laundry, shelved books in local libraries, and worked as a desk clerk at the “Black” YMCA in Cincinnati, where he roomed during high school.
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